Lour Pulse
by Inlerah
Summary: Read. Feel. Forget.


I breathe.

Taking in the caustic breath of frosted night, I feel it echo in my veins. Burning, demanding. My eyes adjust to darkness, so contrasting from the shelling brightness afforded by the higher sight. Only moments...or was it hours ago, that I was hammered back into this form, this inferior shell that yearns for blindness. Once more I look around me, at the broken carcasses, at the red grass. Stomped battlefield, where passion died and trust was drowned in hate.

Khalid, the first face I see, twisted into unrecognition as if some great being squeezed him off like a rag, spilling its fluid out of life. Poor fool. You were not entwined in their deceitful ways, yet you paid their price, along for life, along for death. His expression speaks of pain, fear and, most of all, confusion.

Jaheira, a crumpled heap at his feet. Her limbs twisted like a doll's, bones sticking out like straw stuffing. Copper hair, dishevelled and covering her ruptured face, venomous tongue lying in a puddle of drying blood between her breasts, mocking in its vulgarity. Faintest sparkle of bitter amusement lights itself in the back of my unseemly mind; they look so becoming together, so...right. Even in death, they would not be kept apart.

I walk further, over the battered body lying face-down in the trampled grass, raked with abhorrent claws and striped red. The armour was not enough to halt the vicious onslaught, the large two handed sword broken and both shards driven through his chest. Minsc, my simple friend. No doubt they used you, just as they thought to do with me, or...was your demeanor just an act, another game to ensnare me with, the blind fool that I was?

I turn his body over with my boot, but I dare not look into his face. From the tightened grip of rigid fingers falls a small, furry body, the image of once fondness that now death made a mockery. Something wet and cold drips on my cheek, I look up. The witch, his witch. Prostrate impaled on sharp branches of a rotting tree, looking down upon her protector with sightless eyes. They, too, bled out along with her blood into hungry mouth, evaporated in searing fury. Falling like small, perfect tears, crystallizing into gems before they reach the floor.

I stop to consider, absently wiping fresher blood from my face.

They betrayed, all of them. Bastards. They had to die. It was the only way. I remember none of the delight of ripping their weak flesh apart, spilling their blood like sacrificial mead to water their futile cries. Frozen on their lips, the haggard faces of death, all staring back at me mutely. Silently accusing, condemning. I had to. For treachery, I will not stand. Betrayers.

My eyes turn upwards, toward the dead sky dawning, and the light creeps into low mist, hanging close to the abattoir ground.

The screams still echo in my reeling mind, memories just a shredded rag that flaps in the icy wind. Slowly, I see...I see blood, I see pain, I see dead and isle of hate, tearing all behind me. Her lying breath, her deceiving eyes and alluring skin. Her laughter still so shrill, as if muted by desire. It echoes, as it did in the ecstatic caress of treacherous touch the night before.

Harlot, filthy liar.

I will not be manipulated, I will not be betrayed. My steps stop at her eyes, the dead stare. Even in death, she looks so beautiful, serene features painted in vermilion over ebony skin. I could imagine she was sleeping, waiting to be awoken from a horrid dream, if her body was not eleven paces away, like a discarded shell thrown into dirt by a voracious predator.

I look down upon my hands. They seem inconspicuous, calm and blood-painted. Normal, even. Belying with all the form they possess the beast within, awake and breathing over my shoulder. Under furrowed brow, my eyes search the funeral mist; there she is. Like an apparition in the morning light, frail and swaying with the cold wind.

Only she remains, splattered in blood, on her knees and staring into distant dawn. In shock, most likely, her eyes aglaze, like a cracked statue in penumbral light. Her hair, the darker shade of red which now bleeds over her face in a mockery of witnessed horror. This lying innocence, this insidious pain of mine. She looks lost, dragged into some pain that never was hers, yet forced upon her soul like white-hot shackles that cannot be dropped. Is she in mourning, I wonder idly, does she not understand the stone-carved path of our destiny, does she still deny?

Slowly, like cracking glass my lips stretch into a smile; for this too will pass.

I step forth, offering my hand and she takes it numbly, her eyes no more clearer than before, reflecting crimson. She knows, just as well as I, that she could never leave me.

My little one, my sweet reflection.

It is all so clear now, apparent to me and clearer than the tears she never shed. Even on that caliginous road, leading away from my pedestrian past, from my foster-father's untimely grave, I knew that we could never be truly separated. And I would never leave her, from the cinderating depths of Abyss to the frozen fields of heavens. I will never let her leave.

This lour pulse that throbs through us both, binding us forever.


End file.
